Early modern conversions: Examples of comparable projects


—There are a number of projects using textual analysis and large-scale datasets to visualize the socio-spatial development and distribution of intellectual and personal networks, and map social and institutional change linked to those networks. This post provides links to some examples. Larger scale projects, such as the Darwin correspondence project [ www.darwinproject.ac.uk]  which is progressively digitizing the correspondence of Charles Darwin and making it searchable by variety of key terms such as place, date, and sender/recipient illustrate some of the strengths digital humanities bring to making sense of these kinds of data. One neat feature, as the image below reveals, is the ability to visualize his correspondence temporally.
darwin letters
A similar project comes from the “Cultures of Knowledge” project, and uses the correspondence of the 18th century polymath Hans Sloane.
This project develops Sloane’s corpus through a web accessible and searchable database. The database  is searchable by key term, recipient/ sender, as well as location. Like the Darwin project mentioned above, it develops a temporal-spatial sense of how networks arose by focusing on the circulation of knowledge between a central figure. https://drc.usask.ca/projects/sloaneletters/doku.php
One of the most ambitious and wide reaching exemplar projects expands beyond the correspondences of one individual at the centre of a node, and attempts to map epistolary exchange among correspondents of the Republic of Letters at-large. Based at Stanford University’s Spatial History laboratory, Mapping the Republic of Letters, this consortium has developed a powerful set of tools to analyze and visualize a very large set of data. This following short (12 second) video gives a quick sense of some of this: media1
One working group of the Mapping the Republic of Letters consortium focuses on the correspondence of the Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christian Huygens (1629-1685). The research questions which informed this part of the project are posted here: <http://ckcc.huygens.knaw.nl/?page_id=75> A short exemplar video [Huygens video] gives an example of some of the contributions this project brings by being able to visualize interactions among individuals and spatially.
One more example is the Literary Atlas of Europe  http://www.literaturatlas.eu/en/ which brings a powerful set of tools to make sense not just of the spread of publishing in Europe but also the setting of literature ( what kinds of spatial, social, and cultural settings emerge in literature), and to identify key locations for the rise of literary markets, and production. One particular exemplar which will be of interest to scholars interested in cities is the following:  http://www.literaturatlas.eu/en/2012/01/27/switching-the-scale/